Happily, women no longer take a back seat

News-Times, The (Danbury, CT)

Published 1:00 am, Wednesday, February 15, 2006

When I was a kid growing up in the 1950s and early 1960s, New Milford was a quiet, sleepy, old New England town.

It was a place grounded in what have come to be called "family values," with the family unit, church and school at the center of community life and authority figures held nearly universally in high regard.

It was also a community in which, by and large, it was still a man's world - a community in which men held virtually all of the most important leadership roles and a woman's place was still generally deemed to be in the home.

"Father Knows Best" was a popular TV show of that era - I'm not kidding, younger readers, there actually was a widely watched show by that name - and to a large degree in New Milford, life imitated art.

And then, of course, a woman by the name of
Jodi Rell
from the neighboring town of Brookfield is the governor of our state.

It is a whole different world.

There are a lot of reasons why things have changed from half a century ago, and there are a number of courageous people - women and men - who deserve credit for helping to create a more egalitarian society.

Coretta Scott King
and
Betty Friedan
are two of those people, and in their very different ways they helped women and minorities gain greater rights, access and opportunity.

Both of those women recently passed away, and their deaths have given me pause to think about the impact they had on the fabric of life in this country.

Coretta Scott King was the strong woman behind the strong man - her husband, the Rev. Dr.
Martin Luther King
Jr., the leader of the American civil rights movement.

She was a woman of vision, courage, class and dignity who also carved out her own place in history after the assassination of Dr. King in Memphis, Tenn., in 1968.

Betty Friedan helped launch the women's liberation movement and modern-day feminism with her book, "The Feminine Mystique," and was a founder of the
National Organization for Women
(NOW).

Ms. Friedan believed women should have goals of their own, as she wrote, "outside of husband and children."

That sounds pretty commonplace today, but it was nearly revolutionary in 1963, when many women were willing to take a back seat to men.

There were exceptions, of course, and as I look back, I take pride that my mother did not fit the mold of the traditional housewife.

To be sure, my mother spent most of her time at home for years, with six children of her own and four foster children living with us for varying lengths of time.

To be sure, Mom baked plenty of cookies and went to lots of PTA meetings.

But while my father knew pretty darned well, ours was no "Father Knows Best" home.

Both of my parents were
Ivy League
educated, they both were independent-minded, they both took important roles in the lives and upbringing of my siblings and me, and they shared the decision-making in our household.

My mother sacrificed a tremendous amount to raise her family, as so many other women of that generation did - and so many women of succeeding generations have continued to do.

But as I look back, as much as Mom sacrificed, and as busy as she was, she never lost her self, she never lost her individuality.

In addition to her responsibilities at home, she was actively involved in the community.

She served as a member of the Board of Education, she ran for tax collector just to ensure opposition for a highly popular incumbent, she became a deacon of the First Congregational Church.

Like so many women of her generation, Mom for years didn't know how to drive, but as we grew older, she got her license and bought her first car in her mid-40s, which provided her mobility and allowed her to get back in the work force.

Later in life, Mom went back to college to work on her master's, she did some traveling (including a trip halfway around the world to visit relatives in Australia) and was a regular at Elderhostels.

I didn't really appreciate it at the time, but my mother, while loyally performing the traditional "mom" duties of the era, was in many ways a woman of the future - a woman who found a way to seek individual fulfillment while all the while being a great mother and wife.

I also didn't appreciate it at the time, but my mother taught me that woman are equal to men and deserve equal opportunities.

In retrospect, I guess that because of my mother's example, I wasn't startled by or put off by the women's liberation movement, as so many men of my generation were. What Betty Friedan and
Gloria Steinem
and the other great leaders of the women's movement wanted seemed only natural, and only fair.

In retrospect, I guess that's partly why I so admired the late
Rosa Parks
, who helped launch the civil rights movement by refusing to give up her seat on a bus to a white man, and Coretta Scott King - two women who overcame society's expectations and scaled the barriers in front of them.

America is still far from a perfect country - and New Milford far from a perfect town - when it comes to racial and gender equality.

But there can be no question that we live in a better place thanks to women like Rosa Parks, Coretta Scott King and Betty Friedan, who refused to believe it was a white man's country or a man's world.